


Yellow Black Red

by Phritzie



Series: Drinking Buddies [8]
Category: Runescape
Genre: Age Gaps, Alcohol, Blood and Violence, Bloodlust, Body Horror, Dehumanization, Extremely Darksided Flirting, Former Relationships, Gaslighting, Implied Sexual Content, Many Implied Sideships, Multi, Partial Mind Control, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Soul Bond, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Weirdmageddon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-01 07:04:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13993014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phritzie/pseuds/Phritzie
Summary: A little elbow grease and they're off to see the wizard.





	Yellow Black Red

**Author's Note:**

> Strap in babes. I'm not super happy about how... meandering this got, or how I ended up splitting it into two parts? But hoo boy. Plot abounds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for bad pseudoscience.

A golden wild-mage displaced her footing with several flares of acrid fire, scowling through the slimetrail of drying blood that streaked his gnarled forehead.

Her feet slid and felt for purchase, falling into a controlled squat. Wedging singed boots into rock, one arrow took him down before he could join the fray below, hands clapping around his knee.

It was endless.

She had heard stories from a variety of cultures. Conceptions of hell, limbo, purgatory. Wrapped up in superstition or overly concerned with the balance of repentance over sin. Karmatic debts. Endless reincarnations.

Many involved torture.

This was shockingly close to a few of those.

For some reason, that frightened her as much as it put a weight behind each harsh drawback of sinew.

Worse yet, even more so than the innumerable times she'd awoken remade on the banks of the river of the dead, this prison her friend had fashioned herself was playing dirty.

For each of her departed kindred a hulking avatar would appear, wide as a tree and tough to pierce. They took too much of her attention to down.

The last attempt she'd made at a rescue nearly fractured her sanity when all the cave goblins met the unyielding blow of one such behemoth's auroral scream and just  _died_ , blackening the sky and causing the ground to rumble in a nightmarish roar as Zanik let her grief tear the world asunder.

_Black all the way down._

"You're doing this to yourself!"

Gutting a climbing troll on the spiting end of her longbow, Felix called out to Zanik again. She was cornered on the bridge from all sides excepting that which descended into the churning sulphuric slop of Yu'buisk's fetid pools; human zealots painted with chalky ash and blood, goblin underlings touting maces slippery with gore. Surrounded by the demonic jeers of the cruelest unreality the deceased commander could have pictured for herself. It would take forever and many answered prayers for Felix to get to her from where she was shooting in the seat of the mountainside.

Somewhere high above, crumbling stone jettisoning into the air alerted her to the arrival of more spirits. Her voice was growing hoarse from overuse. "None of it is real!"

Given that, she should have been paying more attention to her own safety.

An ogre bearing the head of Sigmund himself, corpulent and oddly purple, heaved itself up the foothills and swung a maul into the curve of her stomach. Felix was thrown from her perch, sailing down into one of the spikes securing the rope bridge.

It cracked and then it gave, tilting the wooden slats supporting so many bodies askew. "You do not belong," the horror accused, rocky gravel on metal. "Leave."

When she sucked in the breath that had been stolen from her lungs and it came with a rush of coppery agony, it was familiar enough a sensation to be upsetting.

Screams she'd heard too many times in the last few hours wrenched at her heart. Without permission her neck whipped around, and she saw the tail end of a horrific scene.

Dozens of Bandosians plunged into volatile waters, dissolving in ghastly red blooms over the steaming surface. Zanik's scarred hands scrabbled at rotting planks and latched desperately onto the end of one. Few were so lucky. She yelled instructions, still hoping to spare her kin. "Run! Climb back to the shelter!"

"It's no use," a cave goblin cried in reply, anguished. It stumbled to its knees beside Felix, lured across the way by the promise of escape. A sword protruding from its soft palette should have been enough to impede speech, to silence the brain or sever the tender vocal cords of its throat. But nothing made sense here. "They'll never stop hurting us, you'll never be strong enough!"

She turned forward to see the Sigmund ogre grimly raising its stone weapon overhead.

 _Shit._  Shuddering with nausea, too prone to do anything meaningful in her defense, Felix raised her bow to plug it with a vengeful arrow and prepared for another defeat.  _The things I do for love._

_Crack._

A second avatar landed several meters away and the impact of it snapped the rope bridge's tenuous grasp on the cliff face. The disturbance knocked her off target and her arrow went wide, socking into the howling face of a troll as the Sigmund ogre's maul crashed into the rock between her legs.

Battling spiritual projections were toppled and Felix couldn't secure herself in time. The foothill supporting them eroded in a violent landslide, meeting with the unfriendly ocean tidepools below.

Before she burned up in caustic acid, she caught sight of the rope bridge, swinging down with Zanik latched to its side. It crashed and rebounded, stopped by the mesa upholding the champion's gazebo, spires of thatched spear and stone housing departed cave goblins. But it didn't fall.

The goblins stared back.

 

* * *

 

_Please don't stop._

_I won't._

A fun little fact the Apothecary never taught her, ignorant to such matters himself, was that like time, dying did not follow a linear path.

_Do we have a believer?_

That could get confusing if one made a habit of it. Mortals were never meant to keel over multiple times. It just hadn't been built into the machine.

_Should have let him kiss you._

_Hold on, like this, I'll join you next time._

All the images, she suspected, were the reason why so many beatless survivors had tall tales to spin their mates after being resuscitated. Seeing themselves die or their life on a loop made less sense, would be more difficult to process or explain than getting a peek at the afterlife.Experiences lost in translation to remaking certainly haunted  _her_  for days afterward. When she got a glimpse of more. The other ones. Her own demise. Rarely, when she lost the vital understanding of how she'd been killed entirely.

_Don't go into the light!_

_You've died once, you've died them all._

And the more it happened, the weirder it got.

_Were you shocked by the warm life all over us?_

_Yes, fuck. I am, I did._

_...physically incapable of killing you..._

She didn't like it. But what could Felix do, trapped in the void of transition, except wait for it to be over and watch?

 _I trusted you. I wanted you._  

_...but I might find some relief in rendering you permanently immobile..._

_How colorful it was?_

_I want to make you do it again._

 

* * *

 

Fleshless fingers pushed her into the foothold of the staircase as she gasped upright, flailing at nothing.

"A moment. Just take it easy," he requested quietly. "You are facing difficulties; not death."

 _Guthix, aren't I?_ The reaper was plainly there before her.

But undercut by the soothing crash of waves, his echoing voice worked quickly to attune her senses to reality.

And her failure.

_I couldn't do it._

He raised one of her booted feet and in an explicative gesture, shook the shoe gently from side to side. "Your body is whole. Not a chemical soup."

"Do you have to read my mind every time I kick the bucket?" Felix swiped at the tears on her face angrily. "It's not very dignified having that all out there."

Death rose, skull tilting down as he returned to full height. He offered her a hand up and she took it. "I didn't have to. Are you getting somewhere? Does Icthlarin need to intercede?"

"He can't. I'll crack it, I promise," she rasped, deeply indebted to moisture.  _What I wouldn't give for some water._  Meddling in the afterlives of others wasn't their job; right now, it was hers, if she could just put her attachment aside for long enough.

The look he gave her, pale bone awash in blue flame, should have been imparsible. Instead, it rung very plainly of sympathy. Death withdrew, levitating up the stairs to give her privacy. "We don't have forever. If you fail again, he'll have to break some rules."

 _Yeah, great._ Cradled by indiscernibly old architecture, she leaned over the end of the dock miserably and tried to come up with a plan.

Her reflection folded and danced under the troubled waves. The dark sky above made the water impenetrable, a firm shape without end.

 _I am not a strategist_.

She turned to regard the enormous bridge leading into the Other. It towered above the Noumenon, stretching beyond sight into spectral fog. From her curt exploration, she knew it lead to an enormous set of doors guarded by statues of the Menaphite deities.

_Between us, Zanik was probably the greater tactician, and unfortunately, her guilty mind is what I'm up against—_

_Wait._

Taking stock, for a moment, of what she was actually looking at, the World Guardian thumped herself in the shoulder crosswise and grunted.

 _Dumbass_. Felix squeezed the thumbs buried in her fists. The  _bridge._  It had been destroyed that time, and while she had instantly disregarded any significance in it...

She tried to recall the final image of Yu'buisk she'd glimpsed.  _They would have lived, if I had just kept them secluded on the other side._  She fought off the ache in her heart, awash in the embarrassing truth, the unrewarding simplicity.  _Of course that's what I've had to do._

Getting into the unsteady bottom of the boat, she raised each bloodied oar over the side and got to rowing.  _Okay. Attempt number way too fucking many is go._

 

* * *

 

_What is wrong with her?_

_This shouldn't be so delicate a retrieval._

“You're thinking too loud,” Icthlarin accused, prodding him with a look. Velvet black hands raised in a fortifying gesture, shoulders and hips locked in place against the pushback. Stability to empower the wards. “If you want me to help, just ask. I can't stand it when you brood.”

 _I should be helping_  you.

Harold glowered as best he could sans lips. “I'm not brooding. We're all in a very dire situation and she's taking too long gathering our allies together.”

The stiff way he was holding himself betrayed his statement. “I can last until then.”

 _Can you?_  Neither of them could guarantee that. The obelisk whispered to them both across the water, seething taunts. It was still feeding from what it had stolen, feeding Nomad.

Icthlarin’s power over the domain was all that held him at bay.

“Famous words,” he lectured, and ghosted a moon-white fingertip along one perky, isosceles ear. The god chuffed irritably, smiling. “Guess I'll just do my best not to interrupt your concentration."

 

* * *

 

Altogether, even being crushed in the arms of a woman twice her height, this was the freest Zanik had felt in a very long time.

That didn't stop her from trying to get a few words in edgewise, prying at the arms encircling her carefully as her toes rubbed against the knees of Felix's hardened leather leg guards, swinging.

“Felix—”

“ _No,_ ” she responded immediately, a fierce refusal that would have scared her if it hadn't been forced out through the tears cascading into her hair. “Just let me hold you for a fucking second.”

“Can we at least—”

A wracking hiccup shook the shoulders keeping her aloft and Zanik drooped, mouth scrunching into a frown.

“I have had,” Felix stuttered, fingers tightening at the base of her skull. “The worst day, and I never thought I would see you again, or  _smell you_ again, or touch your  _stupid, perfect_ skin again—”

She wriggled, anger building. “I've had a worse day! Several worse days, actually!" Voice ratcheting up an octave, she added, "and my skin isn't stupid  _or_  perfect!”

Her protest went unanswered, blotted out by her erstwhile partner's laugh, the quavering whimper of it muted as Felix pressed damp lips to her forehead. “I'm not going anywhere,” Zanik reminded, eyes squeezing shut at the sensation. “You did it. I'm awake.”

To what effect, she didn't know just yet. Memories returned piece by piece. The Kyzaj. Graardor, lowered in defeat under Felix. Just colorless fragments.

And the world was starting to break down around them, replaced by a sort of blank unknown that didn't appear to have a beginning or an end. The illusion of Yu'buisk her tortured soul had created to cope with the loss of her agency didn't have a purpose now that they had managed to prove her innocence. Soon they would be forced to leave.

_You didn't have to come back for me, but you did. You always do._

Something like longing filled her voice as she spoke. “We have to go.”

“Just a little longer,” Felix promised quickly, tight around her.

_You missed me._

The hand stroking down her back was a strong enough argument that she relented, dizzied by the strange sensation of being held in the arms of someone standing where there was nothing, seeing where there was so little to see.

Very soon they were completely alone, and as they remained in that space, pressed together, they began to fade as well.

_I missed you too._

 

* * *

 

Lumbridge Limbo was, if possible, even stranger than the cyclical horror of Yu'buisk.

Felix didn't like it.

Reliving the experience of Grayzag's madness to return Jessika was infuriating.

Putting together Hazelmere had been even more emotionally exhausting a chore. It was so difficult to parse his meaning as his body swung along the vertices of his long life, hair fading and renewing itself, a marker that hardly helped. She hunted down his teleporting images in phases, evading the grasping whispers of spirits she didn't want to recognize. They floated all along the imaginal castle, seeking truth and absolution just the same.

Meanwhile Xenia kept leaping out of doorways and spaces too small to contain a grown woman, raving about horrible memories and clawing at her with hands that lengthened into wicked blades. When she finally came to, it was as though none of it had occurred.

They reconciled the anger that had been lingering between them as she died, leaning together over a stunningly accurate replica of the Duke's dining room table.

Felix did her best to express every lost admiration; what the frustration of having to chase her down to a final, damning fate of self-annihilation had felt like.

“I agree with you,” the older woman panted loudly, pushing at her forearms. “Holy light, child, you've really gotten a grip on things.”

She withdrew from Xenia reluctantly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I'm glad you finally noticed, you heartless rogue.” It rung with the taste of nerveless desire, a few moments and too many mistakes past its date. “The Apothecary would have done worse.”

Her laugh projected all throughout the castle. “Ingald?  _Never_. White as a sheet at the first touch.” She fixed her tunic, jewelry clinking hollowly. They looked at the ghostly gold and gemstones, awkwardly reminded how this place only provided a mirror, imitated concepts based on memory.

Felix let her up. "I meant—" She blinked hard. "He wouldn't have done  _that._ "

"Don't go telling him I said so!"

They stumbled together to the circle that had been burned into the courtyard, and she sent her away with one final, hard press of lips. "Death will explain the plan."

"I'm sure," Xenia murmured, eyes sparkling in a frame of bewitching crow’s feet. She almost resembled the former, gloriously undignified woman she'd remembered before disappearing.

Felix expelled the full capacity of her lungs, cheeks puffed.

_That should be everybody. I need to get back, find out what we're doing._

Before she could survey her surroundings one last time, a sickening crack of power pierced the calm.

Her head tracked about in search of it but there was nothing to see. The sky neither lightened nor darkened, and the air was the same soupy fog as that over the Noumenon.

A hand grabbed her and she withheld a scream, chin snapping down from where she'd been twisting to peer over the flagpoles.

_Wh—_

"Well," the figure cried, yanking on the boot it had latched around, "help me!"

It was her  _husband_.

The  _dead one_.

Clawing tooth and nail out of the scorched earth, face raised in grim determination.

_Huh._

“Prince  _Brand?_ ” He hardly paused in his efforts and she rushed to help, clapping him under the armpits and hauling backwards. Ankles braced on either side of his wriggling torso, she gasped out a question around the exertion. “How? Better yet, why?”

The royal popped from the ground, bedecked in scrappy finery. An old, friendly affection called her to wipe the dirt from his brow.

“Nice to see you too,” he wheezed, offering her a glimmer of the same winning smile that had talked her into covering up the secret of his preferences. “Forget the how, if you can. I'm here.”

Felix smiled, face askew in confusion. “For? Not a kiss, I hope. All out of those today.”

“Heavens, no.” Brand tossed himself to the stairs of the castle, rubbing his stacked heels together like a cricket to dislodge rocky, foul-smelling mud. His sumptuous expression dimmed, replaced by fatigue. “You appeared so suddenly,” he explained, quiet. “I hadn't thought you would arrive this soon.”

“I'm not dead, sweetheart." She took a seat beside him. Felix slung an arm around the dirty prince, minding the way it tugged at the joints in her shoulders.

Breaking the rope bridge had been a little harder than she'd anticipated.  _Best get that looked at topside._

“And I'm very glad to hear it, but you see, our people  _are_  dying,” he returned dimly. She shifted to face him, and Brand lowered his voice in conspicuous disappointment. “More crisis has come to the north. They need their regent. Where have you been?”

He made a face at her dismayed look. “Sorry! I'm not, I just – there's a lot happening everywhere, your highness. Alright? I didn't mean to shirk duty,” Felix muttered. She smoothed his torn cravat, frowning. “Did you really have to come here  _like that?_  Where have  _you_  been, reincarnating as a worm?”

“It's more efficient than it seems,” Brand dismissed, green eyes hard. “I've been in the Fremennik afterlife. That's where we go. Practically worlds away from you, but adjacent enough to Grim Underworld." He took a breath. "Rellekka, the isles, Moon Clan included; people are dying in droves, showing up and specifically asking that I contact you. It's been impossible until now.”

 _For me, huh._  Her celebrity was pretty tame up north, but...

She shook her head to clear it. "What's killing them?"

“A sickness,” he replied. “They say it comes from the sea, but no illness I have ever heard of can do what they claim.” His hands formed a chokehold around his neck; moved in phases to pull down the flesh by an eye, to wilt the corners of his mouth, go limp at the wrists and teeter.

“Zombified, Felix. Forced to drown others, pulling them off docks. Into water troughs. Barrels of fish. Gods Succor, one man told me he was stuffed head-first into a pail of milk by his own wife.” Brand paused, swallowing. “No one wants to fish anymore, go outside anymore, and their spirits twist with the terror in retelling it to me, but  _none of them_ ,” he emphasized, so terribly serious she leaned away a bit, “were afflicted themselves. All they have managed to kill come back, dragging their own bodies into the sea. That's what they belong to now.”

_Belong to the...?_

_Fuck._

“So, you're saying... there's  _another_  rarefied illness running amok, with a strong association to  _open water_ , and it's killing people. But also enslaving them.” Felix couldn't help the flatness in her words. “And some dead Fremennik told you this.”

The prince nodded vigorously. “That is  _exactly_ what I am saying to you.”

“Well, shit,” she replied shortly, staring. “How long has this been going on?”

He stood and paced to where he'd emerged, toeing the churned dirt carefully. “A week? Again, I'm absolutely stunned you arrived when you did. What's happening?” Brand turned back to her, expression sad. “Why did you come?”

 _Because a lover killed me,_  but that wouldn't go over very well. They never were the best at communicating private matters, and she wasn't sure now was the time to start.  _I should tell him I'll take care of it and that's it,_  she worried, biting her cheek.

“Have you felt the... evil that's been building up?” Felix tested the name on her tongue. “Have you felt Nomad?”

 

* * *

 

He hadn't noticed it at first.

Tough bindings looped over and under, encasing the spiritual intrusion in an opaque netting of closely associated moments. The memory fragments seemed attracted to it, as if by their likeness there was comfort to be had for both guest and guardian.

Childlike, the presence wormed away from his probing.

Distant echoes of stolen life and mutterings about troubled peace drifted from across the wide unknown, breaking his concentration.

Harold shook himself a bit.  _This is abominable. Why am I so fascinated by the form of it?_  Whoever, whatever; it did not have any business being inside the World Guardian.

Her behavior was deeply amiss. He couldn't put a phalanx on exactly  _why_  it felt different, but he hadn't been shy about anything in many years. He would relay his concerns.

"You have a passenger," Harold announced, staring at her from across the war table.

Several of the people they'd managed to recruit turned to observe their conversation.

 _Let them hear._  He knew the pressure of opinion could be devastating.  _Will you deny this transgression to protect your honor?_

The duck of her head wasn't quick enough to conceal her grimace. "Yeah." A tense moment passed, and he inclined, waiting. "Not on purpose, if I know what you're thinking," Felix countered belatedly.

That wasn't a good enough excuse. "Take care not to engage in such conquests," the reaper struck out. Their surroundings responded to his brusque attitude, sharply silencing the waves and their rhythmic beat against the bridge. She exhaled firmly in the ensuing quiet. He eased forward a bit more, lowering his scythe from its perch on his shoulder. "Believe me; the power you gain from doing so isn't worth the trouble."

Grim Underworld's atmosphere tempered to his mood. An advantage of millennia in faithful tenancy. The air thickened, reflecting Harold's persuasion. The threat was real. He would act if she wouldn't.

Felix returned his pensive stare and nodded.

Waves awoke in a roiling rush and then receded, calm again. Were Harold of living flesh, perhaps he would have felt the spray of mist on his face.

It was hard to say who would emerge the victor if they clashed.

She continued, voice tinged with the flavor of deceit. "I'm planning on returning it. Haven't really gotten a chance yet."

_Worrying._

"See that you do," Harold replied.

 

* * *

 

A commotion from below the platform they were standing on drew their attention.

“You'll know nothing! We approach the height of existential perfection, and you bother to keep me from attaining it for something so miniscule? I'll sooner die!”

 _That sounds really fucking fun,_  Felix mused sourly, peering over the ledge down toward where a fountain vomited sickly green spiritual energy.  _Oh, it's one of them._

Icthlarin caught her gaze pointedly and jerked his chin toward the struggling True Order soldier. “You're up again, World Guardian.”

 

* * *

 

Zanik wordlessly helped Brand drag the unconscious Legio to the upper floor. She wouldn't look at her. That was alright. Felix didn't feel like looking at herself right now either.

 _At least I let him live._  Violence itched under her fingernails, branching out from the crux of disaffected anger.  _His fault._  Making her into something evil. Something lustful and wrong.

She cleaned the ichorous ash from her hands carefully, ignoring Xenia's barren stare. “You have changed,” the older adventurer whispered.

_Could've been there to see it._

Felix spoke behind the flat of her palm, expression tight. “Just a bit,” she shared secretively. “Nag me about it later.”

 

* * *

 

Jessika, when not profusely thanking her for alleviating the slow fade of her earthly memories in Lumbridge Limbo, had managed to drop some broad and none too subtle implications that she'd overheard Death about what the World Guardian had been up to topside.

It didn't take too much digging for her to pry out details about the soul.

 _Speaking of._  He was humming again. No sign of hurting yet, weak as it was.

Reluctantly, Felix allowed her to draw up some side calculations centering on her growing attitude problems while she plotted out the design of a ram powerful enough to do the door in.

 _Hope you enjoyed the show,_  she thought furiously. Her eye scanned the blueprint before her without really seeing it.  _Maybe he's here to finish the job._

Icthlarin and Death were already managing construction with the others, one on either level of the terrace.

 _Honestly, I would rather be sawing wood,_  she mused.  _This woman is too smart for me_.

"The amplification of these characteristics, you ought to be very worried," the portal scientist muttered, scribbling formulas.

"I am," Felix deadpanned, rubbing her bruised knuckles nervously. "But if you could explain why I should be, maybe we can actually get somewhere with this?"

Jessika frowned and shook her head. She turned the yellowed book in front of them her way. "I'm not that well-versed in concepts beyond dimensional thaumaturgy. But look here, do you see how this trend predicts an acceleration in spread? We don't know the threshold of infection, and he's not a disease, but," she crossed out a few numbers and circled a sum. "You're clearly experiencing a personality meld."

Her brain was trying. "Please be gentle,” Felix insisted. “I died recently."

Sighing in exasperation, Jessika drew some stick figures.

The first was tall with horns and had a very large pie with just a bit missing, and the other, a mock attempt at her Felix surmised, seemed to be holding a small slice of it. "This is you."

"If you say so," she said quietly. "Why are we holding food?"

"That's his soul. Alright," Jessika tapped the poor doodle of Sliske with her pen. "See how his piece is bigger? With energy as volatile as his, it doesn't matter how large a portion is trapped anywhere, at any point in time." Her grip on the pen adjusted as she bent the page in half and stabbed it neatly through the paper. "Only space."

Felix stared, confused, as she removed the implement and flattened the page again. The scientist indicated the altered drawings impatiently.

The hole had gone through both pie pieces. 

 _I should run him through,_ a voice suggested darkly,  _he should know what it feels like._

Jessika gestured to the round scars in each 'pie'. She spoke, voice trembling with the force of her enthusiasm. "Right now, it's doing anything it can to come together. You'll become more like him. He'll get weaker. But a soul will always want to be whole again and whether it tears from you or from him, the result will be the same. Big entry and exit wounds. Damaged soul." She tapped her chin. "Nobody gets pie."

"Zaros told me this wasn't so serious as all that," Felix muttered. The clawing at her heart combined with the scientist's heavy-handed statements were starting to make her dizzy. "He said there was time for me to make a decision."

"Yes, for you perhaps." Jessika rearranged her hair so that it fell at her back as she straightened up from the table. "But him? Oh, weeks. At the very most. Especially if you keep messing about.

Her eyebrows drew into her hairline. "What?"

Jessika made a few strange, inappropriate gestures. "You know," she hedged shiftily. "Getting all... cozy and close together."

“What the hell makes you think we get  _cozy_?” Her surprise was sizable enough to pull her from the nasty thoughts she'd been sliding into. Felix felt laid totally bare.  _Is it that obvious? Am I projecting?_

The portal scientist laid one comforting hand on her shoulder and indicated the journal with the other. “Here, take it.”

She did, wary of her every movement, wondering how she might be telegraphing her deep-seated desires to Jessika's keen eyes.

“You're just... very expressive, Felix,” she admitted sweetly, adjusting her now-spectral goggles. “There's nothing wrong with it.”

**_Now, you know that isn't quite true._ **

Her whole body tingled with horror at the familiar tenor. Felix turned in quick circles. Jessika made to say something, but she held up a hand to stay her questions. “ _Shhh,_ " she demanded, hand trembling at her lips. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. "Nomad. He's here, he–“

**_Don't be so alarmed. They won't understand. This is only between us and our souls._ **

“I didn't hear anything,” the scientist admitted fearfully, gaze flickering to Death as he drifted over to them from where he had been assisting Xenia in shaping a few wheels. Glowing blue eyes widened, predicting something she didn't want to acknowledge.

A series of minor contractions heralded the approaching event. Felix had expected this sooner.  _You just love to prove people wrong, don't you? Horrible timing, asshole._

“Of course." Nausea building, her arms withdrew from their position on the table to wrap harshly around her torso. "That's perfect."

Her attempt to restrain it failed.

Tendrils of angry heat reached out of her, binding to him, renewing the tether. Foreign emotions bled into her body and she swayed as the aching strings came into focus, full and painful.

Sliske.

Close by. Where, she couldn't tell yet.

And he was  _not happy_.

Given Jessika's recent... suppositions, she wasn't sure how to feel about that.

Nomad noticed.  ** _Maybe not only._** His disembodied words rang with amusement.  ** _You brought a plus one. I don't mind, the more the merrier._  **A tonal shift to something more... envious made her wince. **_My obelisk wants to take them from you, but it can't. I'm a little impressed. Are you getting a taste for this? Little slivers of your slain enemies?_**

 _Am I supposed to answer him somehow, or is he just going to rant at me?_  She addressed Death, still looking at her like she'd committed several atrocities against him personally. “We have to hurry. I think Nomad is trying to distract me.”

 ** _Distract you?_**  Light chuckles coiled around her, prickling down her spine.  ** _Would you really prefer we indulge the fancy of literary tropes, like bad playwrights? I, the dastardly villain and you, the hero, faultlessly working to foil me? Please, 'World Guardian.'_**

The voice grew near-unbearable then, and Felix cringed under the assault of Nomad's booming shout as it echoed through her head.

 ** _All of this is your doing!_**  She felt the suggestion of a breath, perhaps the mage collecting himself, and his next words bucked her control. She had to clamp down on the tether, hissing, while it pulled her.

_Icthlarin's fortress._

**_That is to say,_ you _are the one who killed Guthix. Not Sliske. You brought the gods back to Gielinor, you endangered all of us—_**

Felix felt caught between the grievances of several people. “Alright,” she said, ignoring Hazelmere's mute look of concern. "You've succeeded in goading me."

**_Have I? I'm not sure you understand, then, because my power, my defense, the god you are so quick to denounce? These are all that stand to save us now. Fight it all you wish, but I have already found the solution, and it is not you._ **

Her bluff fell a little flat, she could admit that. “If you feel so strongly about it, then come here and kill me.”

“Hold out a bit longer,” Icthlarin implored, touching her shoulder suddenly. He was offering her a bit of ore. “The undercarriage is complete, Xenia and Zanik are nearly finished.”

 ** _I think I'll wait, actually._** Felix grit her teeth.  ** _Build your siege weapons. I can see you won't change your mind. Just know this. If you should decide to approach my gate now, as a friend, I will accept you with open arms. There is redemption here, for all._**

“You're a chatty bastard,” she snapped, alarming everyone. “And you're right, I'm not interested. Get the fuck out of my head and prepare to have your ass handed to you, in pieces if necessary.”

Nomad laughed, long and deep. It was not in any way tolerable.  ** _I suppose I am. Farewell, then. I look forward to devouring you._**

The tenuous connection snapped.

Her head ached from the recoil.

 _Gods, that_ really _ranks up there for creepiest shit anyone's ever said to me._

Cradling her face in one hand and nails scratching curls out of the table with the other, Felix threw a pained look at Icthlarin. The Menaphite god shook his head gently from where he stood behind her. “We should begin with what we have now if he will be readying his forces.”

“Am I storming the tunnel,” she growled blithely, “or shall I split in two and do all the work?”

Death came to Icthlarin's side in short order, beckoning their ragtag troupe of the dead. “No. Your... unexpected addition can help," he said slowly, dragging Brand to the fore. He waved nervously from behind a square shield, and Felix recognized it as one from her stockpile.  _Sticky fingered bag of bones..._  They weren't ready. None of them had agreed on what to do when they got inside.

The god and the reaper touched fingers behind Brand's back, and Felix sighed.

It probably didn't work that way, but she channeled some of her fearful irritation into contacting Sliske regardless.

_I know you're here. Did you get any of that?_

_Hello? Felix to Jerk. Putting aside my dignity, again, because this is more important._

She didn't want to see him. She really wanted to beat him blue. They were fuzzy and growing more indistinct by the hour, but her memories of being murdered weren't gone yet. Sliske was going to get the full brunt of her agitation if he decided to show himself, and so it was no wonder when he didn't immediately come tramping out offering them his services.

It hurt to even think it.  _Ugh. Please? We could use the help._

No answer. Felix reached out and readjusted Brand's grip on the shield; he was holding it all wrong.

_Guess we're doing it freestyle._

Death ignored the indignant look she wore. "We'll take care of the gate... and this 'god' of his. Easily.” His scythe keened ambiently in his wringing grip. It took on a fine red sheen. “You will deal with Nomad.”

 


End file.
